This just in from Firefly Online HR: Wil Wheaton has joined the FFO voiceover team and will be playing the part of you – that is, he will be giving voice to the male player character. We couldn’t be more excited that Wil is taking on this huge part. (There’s lots of Chinese cursing too!)

I am so excited to be part of this, and not just because it means I get to finally be part of the best universe in the ‘verse.

…well, maybe it is.

A little.

…okay, it totally is.

I’m recording my dialog in a couple of weeks, and when the game is released in Spring, I’ll be there with you as we pilot our own ships, interact with our favorite brown coats, evade the alliance, and, of course, aim to misbehave.

I’m incredibly grateful for this opportunity, I can’t wait to be a leaf on the wind.

I have said this quite a bit in the last several months, and I’ll continue saying it for the next several months: thank you, so much, to all of our backers, for helping us make this show that we love. I couldn’t have done this without you, and I sincerely believe that you’ll be happy that you did, as the season unfolds.

(NB: Apparently, we made a minor rules mistake at one point in the game, which I won’t discuss specifically because spoilers, but I don’t think it would have affected the outcome.)

Anonymity, in some cases a key civil liberty, also enables society’s worst actors. The loudest, most obnoxious, most toxic voices are able to drown out the rest of us—a spectacle that has nearly pushed me to quit the video-game world entirely in recent months. I don’t need to hear about the sexual conquest of my mother from a random 12-year-old on Xbox Live ever again.

But here’s the thing: that random 12-year-old I seem to encounter so often? He probably isn’t 12. According to the ERSB, the average age of a video gamer is 34. That 34-year-old is certainly old enough to know better, but he probably came of age in an era when trolling was not just acceptable but encouraged by a generation of players who rarely, if ever, had to see the actual people they were playing with. No wonder he feels enabled by digital anonymity. It means he never has to face the consequences of his actions, or acknowledge that there is a human being on the other side of the screen.

It’s time to break this cycle—and to teach gamers that they can compete without being competitive, that they can win and lose without spewing racist, misogynist, homophobic bile at their fellow gamers. But doing so requires casting off the cloak of anonymity.

Early feedback via Twitter is split between a majority, who are tired of being harassed while gaming, and a minority who seem to believe I am advocating for an end to online privacy (which I clearly am not). I’m interested to know your thoughts on this column, so please read it, and comment here, if you don’t mind. If you’d like to read more about it, I highly recommend this article, which quotes my friend, Stepto, at length.

In a couple hours, I’ll sit on a seat which will magically hoist itself into in the sky, and I’ll end my day in New York City. I don’t think I can talk about why I’m going, yet, but I’ll be there for just under 24 hours, for something really awesome that I can’t wait to share with the world.

PLAY MORE GAMES!

I have additional thoughts, based on your comments, which I wrote while in a seat in the sky. They are behind the jump.

Like this:

Last night, we wrapped production on the third season of Tabletop. It was bittersweet for me, as always, because I’m so wiped out and teetering on exhaustion, the idea of sleeping until I don’t need to sleep is very appealing … but I’m also sad, because I love the crew so much, and they are such a joy to work with. We truly have become a family over the last three seasons, and it’s going to take me a few days not only to decompress from the intense production schedule, but to get used to not seeing all these people who I genuinely like for 12 hours a day.

I’m incredibly proud of the work we did this season, and I am super excited to get to work on editing and the other post-production tasks, starting on Friday.

For those of you wondering, here is the complete list of games and players from this season, in the order they were played (not the order they will be released):

Our backers also get a special mini-episode that includes a whole bunch of behind the scenes stuff with our crew. I’m keeping that stuff secret unless backers want to talk about it and share it. Also, we have an episode order as well as a season premiere date, but we haven’t announce that stuff, yet.

Like this:

Yesterday was another great day of production at Tabletop. I had an insanely good time playing Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards: Duel at Mt. Skullzfyre with Emily Gordon, Jonah Ray, and Veronica Belmont. We fully embraced the outrageousness of the concept, brought our ridiculous wizards to life, and got in touch with our inner 12 year-olds for maximum juvenile humor. Spoiler alert: this one is definitely a candidate for an extended cut episode.

In the afternoon, I ran Dread for Laura Bailey, Molly Lewis, and Ivan Van Norman. I was so focused on being a good host, and they were so focused on not letting the tower collapse, I forgot to take the obligatory production selfie with them. I hope that we’re able to convey the tension and terror in the final cut of the episode, because I think we all worked together to tell a really cool and compelling horror story.

Today, I’m playing Catan Junior in the morning with actual human kids, and this afternoon, I’m playing Libertalia with actual human friends.

Like this:

Yesterday was a fantastic day at work on Tabletop. In the morning, I played a really fun geek trivia game called Geek Out, with Anne, and our friends Bonnie Burton and Clare Kramer. Normally, I’m not crazy about party or trivia games, but Geek Out is so wonderful and fun, it’s in regular rotation at Castle Wheaton’s Gaming Keep.

In the afternoon, I played my favorite worker placement (or displacement, if you prefer) game of the year, Five Tribes, with my friends Jenna Busch and Satine Phoenix, and Richard Garriot. Yes, that Richard Garriot, as in: the guy who basically invented the MMO, and who has been to freaking space.

Today, we’re playing Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards: Duel at Mt. Skullzfyre in the morning, and in the afternoon, I’m running a Dread scenario. I’ll post some pictures later on the Twitters and Instagrams later today, so anyone who is interested can see who is playing with us (though if you read to the end, you’ll find out who is playing this morning).

Before I run off to get ready for work, I thought I’d share my intro for Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards: Duel at Mt. Skullzfyre, because I think some of you may find it interesting, and it’s the sort of thing that I would probably write about as a blog, if it wasn’t an intro for my show:

I have a confession to make. I originally did not want to play this game on Tabletop, because I felt like it was too random, and that there wasn’t enough strategy. Producer Boyan pointed out to me that we had just finished playing a heavy strategy game, and if I was looking to continue that experience, I wasn’t going to get it from this game.

Tabletop doesn’t have to be, and shouldn’t be, just about heavy strategy games, he suggested, and maybe I should give this game a second chance, let it be what it is, and see if I have fun playing it on its own terms.

I thanked him for his advice and insight, reconsidered my initial impression, and decided to let this game be what it is: a hilarious, fast, relatively light game with amazing artwork, that encourages its players to fully embrace how outrageous the whole thing is. When I did that, a wonderful thing happened: I cranked up some 80s heavy metal, got into the spirit of the game, and had a fantastic time playing it. I don’t even remember who won, and I totally don’t care. The game, as they say, was the thing.

Today on Tabletop, you’ll get to see for yourself exactly what I’m talking about, as Jonah Ray, Emily Gordon, Veronica Belmont and I put on our robes and wizard hats, to reenact the Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards: Duel at Mt. Skullzfyre.

Like this:

For the past several months, my producer Boyan, and I built a list of about 140 games that were potential candidates for Tabletop. We spent the last five weeks playing them to find our final list of games for season three of Tabletop.

It was a very fun process that was also very challenging and kind of exhausting. #GamerNerdProblems

Before I tell you what some of them are, I wanted to talk a bit about the selection process, because it comes up all the time.

It has to be teachable in roughly five minutes (there are some exceptions to this rule).

It must have a good ratio of luck to strategy.

It shouldn’t have player elimination.

It can not have simultaneous play.

It needs to have good production values.

It needs to play in under 90 minutes with four players.

I’m sure there are some others that I’m not thinking of at the moment, but those are the fundamentals.

We also put games into categories, like:

Worker Placement.

Area Control.

Bluffing.

Co-operative.

Co-operative with a defector.

Bidding.

Negotiating.

Storytelling.

And so on. If we end up with two or more games that we really like that fit into the same category, we pick the one that we think would look best on camera, or is in some way a better representation of the category for some reason.

There were games that I loved, like Daniel Solis’ Belle of the Ball, which just won’t work on our show (Belle joins Sentinels of the Multiverse, in that regard). There were games that were so infuriatingly awful, like [GAME THAT SHALL NOT BE NAMED], they made me literally angry with rage. There were games, like Escape, that were supremely fun, but feature simultaneous play, so we can’t use them. There’s Rampage — which really needs to be played at human scale at conventions using cardboard buildings and plushie Meeples — that we can’t play because it’s impossible for us to shoot. There were games that seemed promising, but just fell apart at one point or another.

So we took over 100 games that we thought looked promising, and eliminated the ones that broke one or more of those rules. I’d say that left us with about 45 games in all those categories, which we played many times. I guess we’ll call those games the finalists, because I can call them whatever I want, since this is my show. In fact, we’re going to call them Batman.

So we took the Batman games and played them intensely over a span of about five weeks, ending up with 23 games to be played in 20 episodes. They’re all really great games in their various categories, and I’m super excited to see how they play out when we film the show.

I thought it would be cool to share some of the games we’re playing before we get into production, instead of making everyone wait until the episode comes out, so anyone who is interested in them can pick up a copy before the Tabletop effect hits, and also because I like the freedom to be open like this that comes with our crowd-funded season.

In Libertalia, we’re all pirates trying to outwit each other and bluff our way to the best treasure. It’s super fast to learn and play, has massive replay value, and allows us to talk like pirates. Yar.

We describe this as “7 wonders express”. We’re all trying to have the best meal in a sushi bar, passing cards around the table and trying to keep what will help us, while we try to mess up what everyone else is trying to get. I just love this game, and it’s one of many that are simply outstanding offerings from Gamewright, a publisher that is increasingly becoming one of my favorites.

This is one of the few “gamer” games we’re going to play this season. It’s published by Days of Wonder, a company that usually publishes “lighter” games (like Ticket to Ride and Pirate’s Cove). I’m most worried about how we’re going to make this game work, because it has a ton of meeples and the art on the game, while beautiful, may feel cluttered on camera. I love it so much, though, I am determined to make it work. I even had my editor come over yesterday to play it, so he could give us ideas on how we can best film it. Not that it matters, but this was my favorite game at GenCon this year, and is so far my favorite of 2014.

Oh, I guess I should tell you a little bit about it, right? All these different colored meeples are on the board, and we pick them up and drop them off like in Mancala, as we use them to claim spaces, score points, and collect resources. It’s a little complex to learn (just because there’s a lot of information to digest), but once you climb the steep learning curve, the gameplay is very intuitive and easy to understand. Because it’s set in ancient Persia, there are Djinn that can help players, and it’s heavily thematic.

Also, while we were playing it yesterday, I got up from my crummy card table (I’m waiting for my Geek Chic table to arrive), bumped the table leg with foot (well, maybe I kicked it really hard because DEX is my dump stat), and not only did I knock all the meeples off their tiles, I spilled my iced coffee over all the djinn cards, and knocked a bowl of almonds to the floor.

Click to embiggen and get the full horror of my Anne Wheatoning.

It was the most epic and total destruction of a game I have ever witnessed, and I’ve been to France.

Not that it matters, but I ended up winning the game after we restarted with an entirely new setup. I’m really good at this game, so when I lose on the show like I always do, it’s going to be rough.

So there you have a few of the games we’re playing this season on Tabletop. Over the next few days or whatever, I’ll post some more of them. We go into production on Thursday the 8th, and we shoot until the 20th.

OH! And there will probably be a MAJOR AWESOME ANNOUNCEMENT ABOUT SEASON THREE in the next few days. I hope you’ll join me in getting excited about it.

The IeSF, or International e-Sports Federation, is a global organisation based in South Korea that is comprised of e-sports associations from across the world. Their stated aim is to promote e-sports as a “true sport”. The IeSF’s sixth World Championship will take place this November, in Baku, Azerbaijan.

It’s an absurd division. Seemingly it tells us that Ultra Street Fighter IV is for boys, and Tekken Tag Tournament is for girls; that women aren’t meant to play Dota 2 or Hearthstone; and that while both men and women can play Starcraft 2, they damn well better not do it together.

Of course, that’s not what the IeSF are saying. Their reasoning is far more insidious than that. In a reply to a Facebook comment asking why men and women had been divided, the IeSF responded with the following:

“The decision to divide male and female competitions was made in accordance with international sports authorities, as part of our effort to promote e-Sports as a legitimate sports.”

It’s a bizarre statement, attempting to defend a seemingly indefensible decision. E-sports can be recognised as a “legitimate sport” while still staying true to the differences that exist. Hearthstone is not a game that requires any division by gender—to do so is a completely arbitrary decision that smacks of a desperation to be taken seriously.